


The World Spun On

by NicoAndTheNineGalaxies



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Multi, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 05:14:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19761331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NicoAndTheNineGalaxies/pseuds/NicoAndTheNineGalaxies
Summary: The world spun on, even without him there.Or, I was feeling sad so here's a Dead Poet's Society drabble that I wrote, about the aftermath of Neil's suicide, fifteen years later.





	The World Spun On

**Author's Note:**

> TW for mentions of suicide.
> 
> Nico x

The world spun on, even without him there.

Teachers assigned homework. Tests were passed and failed. Graduation came and went. Todd grew up, moved out (though he wasn’t sure his parents even noticed), got a low-paying job at a bookstore to make ends meet, and he tried to find his passions again.

It was almost like they had disappeared with the crack of the gun that night.

Some of the members of the Dead Poet’s Society kept in touch. Todd knew for a fact that Charlie and Meeks met up weekly for coffee. The few times they invited him along, it was clear that it was more out of pity than anything else, and that they didn’t want him to feel alone.

He felt alone anyway, but it was the sharp, stabbing kind of loneliness that comes from being the only one in the room with no one to love and to be loved by.

Knox and Chris split as quickly as they’d gotten together. Knox always seemed to prefer the chase to the actual relationship.

_ Commitment issues, _ a tiny voice in Todd’s mind whispered.

A voice that sounded an awful lot like Neil.

Pitts was long gone. No one seemed to know quite where he went, but really, no one bothered to look.

And Todd?

Todd might as well have been gone, too.

Every day, that same voice repeated a mantra in his mind.

_ Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it… _

It only seemed to be the night that could bring down his walls, unblock the memories. The memories that, strangely, came through patchy. He could remember some things in vivid detail, and others were only blurs.

The tear that lingered on Charlie’s right cheek, glistening in the light from the window that Neil sat by so often. The way his voice cracked when he said  _ “dead.”  _ The cold, wet, melted snow that seeped into his socks. The way the pen seemed to glide across the sheets of paper in his notebooks, leaving inky dark streaks behind that could never quite match the depth of Neil’s eyes.

And yet, there was so much he  _ couldn’t _ remember, no matter how hard he tried.

Like how he got outside that morning, or how Neil’s eyes used to crinkle at the corners when he laughed, or when he’d chosen to switch from pencils to pens in the first place, or who had tried to pull him back when he tried to run down the hill.

Or simply...Neil. How he was when he was happy.

All he could remember of Neil was the haunted look of defeat that seemed permanently stamped on his face as his gaze caught Todd’s for the last time through the passenger’s side window of his father’s car.

But what was he supposed to do? He grieved, but nothing seemed to slow down. If anything, the world around him only sped up, and before he knew it, fifteen years had passed and he was a lonely, pathetic thirty-something man shelving the new arrivals and longing for the nonexistent day that he could see his own books up there.

But the world went on spinning, and it went on spinning too fast for Todd to catch up, and even though he felt he must’ve lost everything, he went on too.

He had two verses to contribute now, after all.


End file.
